MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – In the heart of the Florida Everglades, visitors can find the remains of a massive Cold War-era nuclear missile base still standing in the middle of the wetlands park.
According to the National Park Service, the base was constructed in 1965, just after the Cuban Missile Crisis a few years prior.
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Back then, many of the United State’s air defenses were positioned to ward off potential attacks from the Soviets via the North Pole, but thanks to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. realized it needed to shore up defenses in the south, as well.
As a result, this base — the HM69 Nike Missile Base (a.k.a. “Alpha Battery”) — was built in the Everglades National Park, alongside three other batteries in South Florida.
The missile base was primarily comprised of three barns, an assembly building, kennels, barracks, and several other support buildings, along with up to 18 missiles, each of which could produce around 40 megatons of force.
Combined with the other South Florida batteries, it meant that the region could fire off up to 72 missiles in the case of an attack — a missile per minute for over an hour, park rangers state.
And unlike the typical rocket launches you might find along Florida’s Space Coast, these missiles were geared to take off at the speed of sound in less than a second if fired. Luckily, the base successfully deterred potential attacks, so no such missiles were ever let loose from here.
NPS officials explain that when the base was in use, it was manned by around 140 soldiers and a handful of guard dogs, the latter of which each had a military police officer for a handler.
Park rangers at the site say that a high-level clearance was needed to even get onto the compound, and even then, visitors had to operate in groups of at least two people. Otherwise, they were likely to be accosted by an armed guard or one of the vicious sentry dogs.
“The dogs were trained to only listen to their one handler, and to attack all other people,” NPS officials wrote. “There are stories of soldiers running for cover if a dog got loose until their handler got them back under control.”
Rangers at the park also tell stories of the hardships that soldiers stationed at the base would have to face, enough so that it would sometimes be referred to as “Hell.”
There were even a few accounts where soldiers and dogs were reportedly struck by lightning thanks to their metal equipment and South Florida’s propensity for storms.
“We lived in squalid tents in the swampland of the Everglades, and in the surrounding tomato fields and cow pastures,” said Charles Carter, who was stationed there. “We were young kids. But we were old enough to know that our missile and radar sites would be the first target in a Soviet or Cuban attack.”
But by the mid-1970s, over 200 Nike sites across the country had been decommissioned. The HM69 base was the last to defend the continental U.S., ultimately following suit in 1979.
That’s not where its story ends, though. In 2001, park officials learned about the significant history of the site from a visiting veteran.
As a result, the HM69 missile base ruins were entered into the National Register of Historic Places in 2004, and it was opened for tours starting in 2009.
The base is open to visitors between December and April, with guided tours by park rangers available at select times.
The tour will take guests from the nearby Daniel Beard Research Center, to the entrance of the base, and looping all the way to the back of the site, where visitors can check out the interior of one of the missile barns.
For more information about the site and tours in the Everglades National Park, visit the Everglades Institute’s website by clicking here.
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